While many Americans seem to be waking up to the threat of a centralized, statist government to our liberties, many, I fear, believe it could never happen here. They cannot conceive of a totalitarian take over of our country. How could it possibly happen here? I believe a better question is what makes us think it can’t happen here?
The United States of America at its founding, with its form of self-government and guaranteed personal rights, was something different than the world had ever seen. In many ways, it still remains unique amongst the democratically oriented countries of the world today. Only the Constitution and a national desire to uphold its conventions, has kept us all free to this point. However, this desire seems to have been replaced in the hearts of many by the desire for comfort and future assurances of comfort. For this they have been willing to incrementally give more and more of their lives over to the ministrations of the federal nanny state.
Those who don’t believe it can happen here view the actions of government from a belief that the motivations of our legislative representatives are pure and looking for our best interests. Because of this belief, they overlook things that would have set our founding fathers to the streets with pitch forks and torches. The founders believed that all power should be viewed with a suspicious eye because they knew that, as Lord Acton said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Even legislators who start out with the most noble of intentions can be drawn to the seductive lure of power. They can also begin to see themselves not as servants, but as leaders. Many of these people are surrounded by sycophantic bureaucrats who constantly stroke their egos and tell them how great they are. They are also surrounded by people offering them money, power and position if they will just vote this way or play the game that way. They begin to believe that they know better than the voters what is “best for the country.” They begin to see our tax money as their money, to spend as they see fit…and these are the ones who start out with good intentions.
The founding fathers warned us over and over again of the dangers of consolidated power, as I covered in an earlier post, Balance of Power. And yet many seem content to sit idly by as more and more power is assumed by the government. As we have turned a blind eye to our representatives’ disdain of constitutional restraint of their power, they have become ever more emboldened to shed those “shackles” and ignore the rule of law to carry out their own agendas. The rate at which this usurpation of power is proceeding seems to be on an exponential curve. With the new administration and lopsided balance of power in Congress today, the trend seems to have shot straight upward.
It is not just the desire to control the health care industry (which comprises approximately 1/7th of the nations GDP), but also the banking industry, the auto industry, Cap and Trade and the “Stimulus Package.” It is these and bills in Congress that would give the President power to shut down the Internet in an “emergency,” and forcibly quarantine people in the threat of a pandemic (which they are already trying to make out of H1N1). It is the attempt to use the census to find out who has guns in their house and other information that is not proscribed by the Constitution. It is the fact that the White House is hiring a contractor to pull information from social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, etc., to track those critical of their policies. Eventually, when you look at all of the attempts to change government’s role in our lives, even the least cynical souls among us has to begin to see a trend that is disturbing.
So, once again I ask, what makes us think it can’t happen here? Do we think that somehow, after thousands of years of history to the contrary, human nature has changed and no one wants to be a dictator anymore? Are we so arrogant to think that we are in some way so unique that no one could take over? Are we so naïve to think that government really just wants what is best for us?
Even if we may like the current President or Congress, even if we think they are noble and pure of heart, as we give more power to them, we cannot forget that they will not always be in power. Who comes next? What will their motivation be? How will they use the power we ceded to them?
It has happened many times before in countries like Russia, China, Korea, Viet Nam, Italy and Germany. It can happen here. It will happen here if we are willing to incrementally trade comfort for freedom. We must always be suspicious of government power. We must watch over it and insist that it acts according to the rule of law as based in the Constitution. We must not shrink from our duties as “The People” to vote for the best qualified and upright candidates, not simply listen to the propagandistic media. And, we must always remember…
“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” - John Philpot Curran, 1790
